1. It can be lazers or lasers, according to my sister, a lexicographer, can be either depending on localisation.

Your sister is a terrible lexicographer."Laser" is an acronym, or at least derived from one. The S stands for "stimulated". The term may have evolved from L.A.S.E.R. into an actual word, but that doesn't mean that people can just replace letters willy-nilly because of "localisation" (a word that actually does sometimes use a z).

Silverstaff:ha-ha-guy:So lets say you have a Luke Skywalker living with the Lars family. The Lars family of course that Shmi married into and on the home planet of Anakin Skywalker. You're the Empire and you don't look at that in the least? Worst Homeland Security Department ever. You'd think some droid that was processing census data would have lit up like a Xmas tree when that one came up.

You really think an out-of-the-way dirthole like Tatooine is going to have detailed census data reported back to the Empire? I always figured Obi Wan put Luke on Tatooine for 2 reasons:

1. It's so backwater and undeveloped that the Empire will not pay too close attention to who was there. Heck, Obi Wan himself lived in a shack there for almost 20 years as the Empire tried to hunt the Jedi to extinction, and never found him.

2. Tatooine is too tied to Anakin's memories of his childhood and his mother that the entire planet is like a painful memory to him, he would never go there. As literally the last place in the Galaxy that Vader would ever look, it would be the first place to hide.

Although, since before he met Obi-Wan, kept talking about wanting to transmit his application to the Imperial Naval Academy, I always wondered about the "what if" Luke actually applied. I would think the name "Skywalker" would flag pretty hard in Imperial systems and his application would be accepted immediately. In fact, some very helpful Stormtroopers would be there to escort him there.

I get Vader not wanting anything to ever do with Tatioone (likely why he doesn't go down with the search party for the droids. Or maybe his rebreather doesn't handle sand well). However the Emperor being the paranoid farker he is, you think he'd check up on things like that. Or just rubbed out the Lars family to clean up lose ends.

Regarding the academy and Skywalker, I guess the idea there is there was a reason Uncle Owen kept stalling that application. However you'd think Owen would have changed the kid's last name and just claimed him as a natural born or something. Keeping it Skywalker implies at some point he's cool with Luke finding out his heritage, maybe getting some training, and then doing something. Yet he badmouths Kenobi all the time.

Even weirder is in the prequels the big deal is that Anakin started training too old. So he couldn't become a Jedi Knight and slids over to the dark side instead. So after screwing that up, when handed a kid, what does Kenobi do? Figure "enh I'll wait till he is 18 or so and then start training him...". Seems weird.

And let me point out that turbolaser bolts can obliterate small asteroids, and it has been calculated that a single Star Destroyer turbolaser bolt has about the same output as the bomb that took out Hiroshima.source

3. Star Destroyers DO have deflector shields that are at least as powerful as those on Galaxy-class ship from Star Trek.

5. A Star Destroyer has more than just one guy manning the weapons console, too. They have an entire crew (37,085) that is dedicated to the operation of the ship, and a good chunk of that crew is actually manning weapons bays and consoles. They're assisted by targeting computers, but since the Star Destroyer has at least 64 heavy weapons emplacements on the top, bottom, sides, front and back of the ship, they've got a distinct need for more than just one fellow firing the one main gun, as in a Galaxy-class ship.

This is no contest. The Enterprise has been shown to be incapable of even destroying a single small asteroid. A Star Destroyer has been shown blasting asteroids into dust with minimal effort.

The ONLY advantage the Galaxy-class ship has over the Star Destroyer is transporter technology, which any Trek fan knows is baffled by shields; If either ship has shields up, it won't work. I guarantee you the Imperials aren't going to drop their shields, and even if they did, beaming a proton torpedo onto their bridge wouldn't stop them. Why? There are auxiliary command posts, for one, and a Star Destroyer doesn't put all its most important equipment and personnel in just one place on the ship.

On top of that, these things have TEN tractor beam projectors, and two large docking clamps/claws that are used to capture ships a lot bigger than a Galaxy-class starship.

In truth, I doubt a Galaxy-class starship could stand up to a Corellian CR90 corvette, much less an Imperial Star Destroyer.

Turbolasers? Does that mean the Death Star slapped a Type R sticker on it?

Besides, Genesis Torpedo.Checkmate.

Yeah Han, that's no moon. It's now Risa II, and Riker is gonna christen it by doing Troi in the pooper in the dent that was once the turbo hyper laser typer r

ha-ha-guy:However the Emperor being the paranoid farker he is, you think he'd check up on things like that. Or just rubbed out the Lars family to clean up lose ends.

Why would Palpatine know about the Lars? Unless he was a Metallica fan.

Even weirder is in the prequels the big deal is that Anakin started training too old. So he couldn't become a Jedi Knight and slids over to the dark side instead. So after screwing that up, when handed a kid, what does Kenobi do? Figure "enh I'll wait till he is 18 or so and then start training him...". Seems weird.

Obi Wan wasn't Luke's legal guardian. He had no control over when or if he was to be trained. In fact it seemed to not even occur to him that he had o drag Luke into it before he saw Leia's message. Even then, when Luke said he wanted to be a Jedi, Obi Wan had a definite "Oh shiat, not this again" look.

archichris:ha-ha-guy: archichris: I dont honestly recall any attempt to explain SW-ian physics in terms of tech level. At least not in the movies. They had huge exhaust ports on star destroyers, indicating some pretty serious fuel being burned, but then the deathstar just kind of wafted along with no external engines of any kind.

SW Tech never did have any kind of initial plans to be consistent. Lucas just wanted the best special effects and good lines. So he tossed in a bunch of words like shields, lasers, proton torpedos, etc for the characters to say. Then he filmed whatever looked cool.

Also SW suffers in that every official game, comic book, and novel is canon. So dozens of authors have gotten to further butcher the physics of SW over the past decades. People try to retcon it into something uniform, but it's pointless to a degree.

They should have just paid the asking price and bought the inertia-less light drive from the outsiders.......

1. It can be lazers or lasers, according to my sister, a lexicographer, can be either depending on localisation.

Your sister is a terrible lexicographer."Laser" is an acronym, or at least derived from one. The S stands for "stimulated". The term may have evolved from L.A.S.E.R. into an actual word, but that doesn't mean that people can just replace letters willy-nilly because of "localisation" (a word that actually does sometimes use a z).

archichris:Star treks techology was just plain bat fark made up.And the horrible part is it just kept getting stupider. The Holo-deck was about the dumbest thing I have ever seen. I seem to recall an episode where they got trapped inside and the people outside couldnt turn it off because then the people inside would be gone forever.......Seems a little severe for a simple light effect. If you really can use the technology of a holodeck to disintegrate matter then shouldnt you make a portable version, stick some engines on the back and drill holes in the borg with it?

And plot.

They couldnt be different. SW was a story arc, a lame story arc, but still there was a farking point to what people were doing. 90% of star trek was typical serial episodic numbnuts. Introduce new alien race, or scientific problem, or on ship romance. Put it in front of a back drop of a new alien race, science problem, or romance and poof! you have an episode. Oh look theres a quantum hyper field destroying the environment of this planet full of simple agrarian hot chicks who have some social quirk that makes it possible for Kirk/ Ryker to sex them all up before solving the problem.

It doesn't matter what you say. It's really... pointless. The only thing you will never, EVER, be able to deny AND which TOTALLY negates any arguement you will ever make, are these words:

Nihilist's Guide to Reticent Entropy:And let me point out that turbolaser bolts can obliterate small asteroids, and it has been calculated that a single Star Destroyer turbolaser bolt has about the same output as the bomb that took out Hiroshima.source

Ah, Stardestroyer.net. The same people who try to judge power output of a weapon by the size of special effects fireballs in space.

1) Star Destroyers do have shields2) They don't use actual lasers3) Trek has never used the transporter as a weapon as they could have easily done, especially with those Borg ships that let them beam in and out at will

/end geek rant

Also, wasn't Star Wars "a long time ago"? Star Trek is supposed to be several hundred years in the future.

But Binks out-losers him. Which, if you look at it in a certain way, is another advantage for Wesley - he's a loser on such a scale it takes a supercomputer and crap Jamaican accent to out-loser Wesley.

zato_ichi:Also,WeenerGord, that burn was so sick, it's in an oxygen tent in the isolation ward.

Although I am understandably pleased to have at last succeeded in scoring mad props by burning some poor hapless dude on FARK, I feel some credit should go to Ratmaster999. I have just discovered that his wife was a nude bathing beauty in a real live Hollywood movie. Way to go dude!

Son of Thunder:BroVinny: You seem. . . tense. You know what would ease your tension?

A yummy frog.

Superintendant Praline: Now, this item, "Crunchy Frog". Am I to understand there's a real frog in here?Company owner: Yes, a little one.Superintendant Praline: What sort of frog?Company owner: A dead frog.Superintendant Praline: Is it cooked?Company owner: No.Superintendant Praline: What, a raw frog?!Company owner: We use only the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.Superintendant Praline: That's as may be - it's still a frog! Do you even take the bones out?Company owner: If we took the bones out, it wouldn't be crunchy, would it?

But Binks out-losers him. Which, if you look at it in a certain way, is another advantage for Wesley - he's a loser on such a scale it takes a supercomputer and crap Jamaican accent to out-loser Wesley.

I tease.

I'm a fan of both, and I have to give the upper hand to Wesley on this one. Wesley was a promising character that got dealt a bad hand due to lazy writing and/or neglect/fan rejection. Jar Jar is just...bad. Like, terrible bad.

Star Trek episodes can get a pass on a lot of bad writing because of its episodic nature, sheer volume of material and rotation of talent.Star Wars, however, is much more infrequent, and much more calculated. It gets less of a pass from me.But, one of my earliest memories is bouncing to the Imperial March on vinyl played on my dads' Cerwin Vega floor speakers.

Surool:Son of Thunder: BroVinny: You seem. . . tense. You know what would ease your tension?

A yummy frog.

Superintendant Praline: Now, this item, "Crunchy Frog". Am I to understand there's a real frog in here?Company owner: Yes, a little one.Superintendant Praline: What sort of frog?Company owner: A dead frog.Superintendant Praline: Is it cooked?Company owner: No.Superintendant Praline: What, a raw frog?!Company owner: We use only the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.Superintendant Praline: That's as may be - it's still a frog! Do you even take the bones out?Company owner: If we took the bones out, it wouldn't be crunchy, would it?

And a Python reference. The circle is now complete...

I used to work in a comic book shop about 12 years ago, so I'm really getting a kick out of these...

zato_ichi:Star Trek episodes can get a pass on a lot of bad writing because of its episodic nature, sheer volume of material and rotation of talent.Star Wars, however, is much more infrequent, and much more calculated. It gets less of a pass from me.

Yeah, because they churn out an episode every week for 30 years and 11 movies, sometimes more than one series at a time, it gets to make even less sense than a movie series. Maybe a better answer would have been to turn it down a notch on the sheer volume if they couldn't cut it. Like 5 seasons of TNG, 5 seasons of DS9 and 3 movies might have helped.

But Binks out-losers him. Which, if you look at it in a certain way, is another advantage for Wesley - he's a loser on such a scale it takes a supercomputer and crap Jamaican accent to out-loser Wesley.

I tease.

I'm a fan of both, and I have to give the upper hand to Wesley on this one. Wesley was a promising character that got dealt a bad hand due to lazy writing and/or neglect/fan rejection. Jar Jar is just...bad. Like, terrible bad.

Star Trek episodes can get a pass on a lot of bad writing because of its episodic nature, sheer volume of material and rotation of talent.Star Wars, however, is much more infrequent, and much more calculated. It gets less of a pass from me.But, one of my earliest memories is bouncing to the Imperial March on vinyl played on my dads' Cerwin Vega floor speakers.

OH yeah, all this is entirely pointless if you look at it from, uh, REALITY! I'll agree with you, and you'll also notice I referred to Wesley instead of the actor who portrayed him.

Ha! The jokes on you. Bobcat sucks. I never watched the whole 4 minutes. You posted a link and I only watched 3 quarters of it,,,,I always Thought Bobcat was over rated and only watched it to 3:40 ,, oh wait,,,,,

1. It can be lazers or lasers, according to my sister, a lexicographer, can be either depending on localisation.

Your sister is a terrible lexicographer."Laser" is an acronym, or at least derived from one. The S stands for "stimulated". The term may have evolved from L.A.S.E.R. into an actual word, but that doesn't mean that people can just replace letters willy-nilly because of "localisation" (a word that actually does sometimes use a z).

And let me point out that turbolaser bolts can obliterate small asteroids, and it has been calculated that a single Star Destroyer turbolaser bolt has about the same output as the bomb that took out Hiroshima.source

3. Star Destroyers DO have deflector shields that are at least as powerful as those on Galaxy-class ship from Star Trek.

5. A Star Destroyer has more than just one guy manning the weapons console, too. They have an entire crew (37,085) that is dedicated to the operation of the ship, and a good chunk of that crew is actually manning weapons bays and consoles. They're assisted by targeting computers, but since the Star Destroyer has at least 64 heavy weapons emplacements on the top, bottom, sides, front and back of the ship, they've got a distinct need for more than just one fellow firing the one main gun, as in a Galaxy-class ship.

This is no contest. The Enterprise has been shown to be incapable of even destroying a single small asteroid. A Star Destroyer has been shown blasting asteroids into dust with minimal effort.

The ONLY advantage the Galaxy-class ship has over the Star Destroyer is transporter technology, which any Trek fan knows is baffled by shields; If either ship has shields up, it won't work. I guarantee you the Imperials aren't going to drop their shields, and even if they did, beaming a proton torpedo onto their bridge wouldn't stop them. Why? There are auxiliary command posts, for one, and a Star Destroyer doesn't put all its most important equipment and personnel in just one place on the ship.

On top of that, these things have TEN tractor beam projectors, and two large docking clamps/claws that are used to capture ships a lot bigger than a Galaxy-class starship.

In truth, I doubt a Galaxy-class starship could stand up to a Corellian CR90 corvette, much less an Imperial Star Destroyer.

::cough:: Virgin ::cough::

PS. Stargate kicks both of their asses (Carter destroyed a star), they beamed weapons, and they had MacGyver.

1. It can be lazers or lasers, according to my sister, a lexicographer, can be either depending on localisation.

Your sister is a terrible lexicographer."Laser" is an acronym, or at least derived from one. The S stands for "stimulated". The term may have evolved from L.A.S.E.R. into an actual word, but that doesn't mean that people can just replace letters willy-nilly because of "localisation" (a word that actually does sometimes use a z).

I think you just proved his point, ya pedant.

How does that prove his point?

It'd be like changing scuba to skuba. It's an acronym.

What does the "z" stand for in lazer?

Well, you said that L.A.S.E.R. may have evolved into an actual word: laser (which it has).You then give an example of a word: "localisation", that due to localization, has two accepted spellings.Now that "laser" is a word and not strictly an acronym, shouldn't its use be subject to the same local variancesas other words? I'd have thought so. Personally I'd spell it 'laser' for the reasons you mentioned - but yourargument did sort of legitimize the use of 'lazer'.

And let me point out that turbolaser bolts can obliterate small asteroids, and it has been calculated that a single Star Destroyer turbolaser bolt has about the same output as the bomb that took out Hiroshima.source

3. Star Destroyers DO have deflector shields that are at least as powerful as those on Galaxy-class ship from Star Trek.

5. A Star Destroyer has more than just one guy manning the weapons console, too. They have an entire crew (37,085) that is dedicated to the operation of the ship, and a good chunk of that crew is actually manning weapons bays and consoles. They're assisted by targeting computers, but since the Star Destroyer has at least 64 heavy weapons emplacements on the top, bottom, sides, front and back of the ship, they've got a distinct need for more than just one fellow firing the one main gun, as in a Galaxy-class ship.

This is no contest. The Enterprise has been shown to be incapable of even destroying a single small asteroid. A Star Destroyer has been shown blasting asteroids into dust with minimal effort.

The ONLY advantage the Galaxy-class ship has over the Star Destroyer is transporter technology, which any Trek fan knows is baffled by shields; If either ship has shields up, it won't work. I guarantee you the Imperials aren't going to drop their shields, and even if they did, beaming a proton torpedo onto their bridge wouldn't stop them. Why? There are auxiliary command posts, for one, and a Star Destroyer doesn't put all its most important equipment and personnel in just one place on the ship.

On top of that, these things have TEN tractor beam projectors, and two large docking clamps/claws that are used to capture ships a lot bigger than a Galaxy-class starship.

In truth, I doubt a Galaxy-class starship could stand up to a Corellian CR90 corvette, much less an Imperial Star Destroyer.

::cough:: Virgin ::cough::

PS. Stargate kicks both of their asses (Carter destroyed a star), they beamed weapons, and they had MacGyver.

meh... the SDF-1 would take both down in a single shot from across a solar system.

And as for as Tie fighters sent ahead, VF-01 fighters would use them for target practice.

Mugato:zato_ichi: Star Trek episodes can get a pass on a lot of bad writing because of its episodic nature, sheer volume of material and rotation of talent.Star Wars, however, is much more infrequent, and much more calculated. It gets less of a pass from me.

Yeah, because they churn out an episode every week for 30 years and 11 movies, sometimes more than one series at a time, it gets to make even less sense than a movie series. Maybe a better answer would have been to turn it down a notch on the sheer volume if they couldn't cut it. Like 5 seasons of TNG, 5 seasons of DS9 and 3 movies might have helped.

OK, sure. But it's out there, and we've got to go on what is done. For all they have done, I think ST does a piss-poor job on inter-personal relationships (much of DS9 being a variable) vs. SW, but ST does a far better job in moral questions.

I get what you are saying, and that comes down to proprietary control, which as I barely understand, became a problem w/ ST.

But, what I'm getting at is volume of quality, and as one with a preference towards SW, this pains me to say that ST wins. I talking about movies and film, I haven't read that many books. Each incarnation of ST has 2-4 great episodes per season, and 1-2 outstanding episodes.SW has a pretty limited pool to draw from, and has a stricter vetting process.But, I could be talking out of my ass. I've been drinking.